The killing of Osama bin Laden reminds us that there are only two disciplines in which uncaused events occur—quantum physics and the history of U.S. foreign policy. According to the version of history expounded by the American media and politicians, the passenger...
When the United States begins to draw down overseas military forces from trouble spots, the American media, and therefore the public, assumes the show is over and loses interest. This waning of attention and interest has happened in Iraq and is dangerous. This...
VIENTIANE, Laos - Eighteen-year-old Phongsavath Manithong rubbed his eyes with the back of his arms as he described how his life changed forever. He was not even born yet when U.S. military pilots dropped millions of tiny explosives onto Laos. But almost four decades...
Although David Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, recently peddled the notion that senior Taliban chieftains had made contact with senior Afghan government officials about the possibility of starting reconciliation talks, such talk of peace in our...
One striking aspect of the Vietnam years – and the antiwar movement of that era – was the degree to which you could see images of Vietnamese civilian suffering here in the United States. Among the iconic images of that war, for instance, was Nick Ut's photo of a young...
During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson and the military argued that we had to win in order to prevent communism from taking over other nations in the vicinity, the so-called domino theory. The military asserted repeatedly that provided we sent over more...
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: In recent years, this Web site has had a fine record when it comes to college commencement addresses, in part because I have a fondness for the form at its best, and in part because I think we should all have a chance to graduate into...
WASHINGTON – It is all too clear why we can't seem to protest our way out of this war. And as a result, the war itself may never end. In fact, Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently suggested that “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan may be just that – “enduring” –...
Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam By Gordon M. Goldstein Holt, 300 pp., $16.00 (paper) The debate over foreign policy that culminated in President Barack Obama's address to the nation on December 1, 2009, concerns a war that began with...
